Are We Having Fun Yet?

 

A friend of mine used to wear a t-shirt with this phrase on it when she was in the midst of raising a teenager, but the phrase hit me the other day when I saw some sports channel covering a Little League tournament. I thought to myself whatever happened to just playing playground ball and having fun?

And, what part do we as parents pay in the push to make competition such a “serious business” for elementary school kids. While our book is about helping your student athlete get a “berth” somewhere in the college athletic ship, we do understand that there has to be a love of the sport deep down within the athlete in order to sustain the many years of workouts, conditioning and playing. What seems to be happening in our generation and the ones following ours, are parents who want to be the player, coach, or sports critic. These are the “wanna bees”, those who probably never played sports, or those that played, but never made a varsity team, or those that were passed over. The desire to somehow transfer their unfulfilled goals of being an athlete onto their unsuspecting children plays out more frequently than not in youth soccer games, swim meets, basketball games, etc. across the country.

We are all for getting kids involved in sports because we have seen the added value of correctly managed competition to real life. But, limiting children to one sport in elementary school or turning the love of a sport into a job to get a “jump” on the competition is really a form of insanity. Our daughter started out riding horses and became quite good, so good that she participated in jumping competition. But, along with that, we felt she needed to understand what a team sport felt like and she began playing soccer at age eight. We were just happy that she enjoyed athletics and loved horseback riding and soccer. In seventh grade, she dropped both and turned to basketball, cross-country and even played a season of volleyball. The multiple sports we think made her a better basketball player and we were just happy that she was an involved kid.

But, so many parents today, are second guessing coaches even without having a real knowledge of the sport. Parents push to have their athlete get more time than another person on the team and, often, go beyond harassing to threatening using political clout to try to change an outcome for their child. Case in point was a group of parents in Castro Valley, California who didn’t like the amount of time their high school athletes were getting from the coach in games and convinced the school board into establishing an “independent committee with the coach on it” who would choose players for the coach’s team. When the independent committee did not choose the parent’s children to play, they cried foul and said the committee had been rigged. Who has time for this nonsense?? And, the sad thing is, instead of letting their student athletes enjoy their time playing basketball, the camaraderie of their friends and having good memories of their high school basketball life, the parents chose to put their egos ahead of their children. The NCAA states that less than 1% of NCAA athletes go on to play professional sports. And, not every high school athlete will be able to play in college. Why not put our energy as parents into supporting our children’s joyfulness with their sport, helping them to improve their abilities, learning about being a member of a team and working for the common good? And, if they want to play in college, then put that unfulfilled energy into helping our student athletes know how to do that and being the ballast they need in their adolescent lives.

Sure, we want to make sure that those kids with talent get a chance to play in college, but can we get rid of the ESPN media pressure on young student athletes and bring back the love of the game? We are all for having some fun while working hard. Let us know what you think.

Pat and Al
December 2008